


Light Blue

by bigscarythings



Category: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, No Spoilers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigscarythings/pseuds/bigscarythings
Summary: Ren comes home from a walk in the dead of the night. Rika isn’t as asleep as Ren hopes she is.
Relationships: Ayano Rika/Isuzu Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Light Blue

**Author's Note:**

> look i just wanted to write fluffy “glad you’re alive” smut for this pairing because it’s a great trope and a great ship and then i'm like “oh it’d be more satisfying if i wrote them fighting a really badass grimdark witch first to establish the context” and now it’s over 50,000 words. it’s not ending. i'm not sure where it begins. i can’t stop adding to it. and now i have roughly six other things i’m writing for this dumb and cute and heartbreaking little gacha game. so have some fluff.
> 
> i've only played NA version, so the entire basis of "post-canon" is just "bad shit happens but rika and ren survive it." yes, it is bold of me to assume that any of these characters make it to college age, but hey. i hope you like it.

Rika hadn’t woken up when the floorboards creaked, and not when the door clicked shut. It had been a while ago, when she realized the emptiness next to her. She thought she was in that one seemingly endless dream again, where the shadows seeped as thick as smoke. But tonight it hadn’t been a dream at all - there was Ren, creeping back into their bedroom. She had been gone. She had come home.

Rika knew the padding of Ren’s steps, the rhythm; she could practically hear her footsteps before she made them. Little by little, instead of just hearing her, Rika could better perceive her, looking like a pale white flower attached to a black stem. Ren was oddly frenetic for someone trying to be sneaky, first trying to quietly hang up her coat, then fumbling into her pajamas in the dark. 

She closed her eyes and didn’t dare move when Ren crawled back into bed behind her, shifted a little, a solid and real weight. Slowly, Ren leaned in close, and kissed Rika’s cheek. Ren’s lips were chilly, but yes, Rika felt warmer than the blankets alone could ever make her. She grinned with those lips still lingering on her cheek.

“Oh no,” Ren gasped, “I’m sorry–”

Rika rolled around and got another cute squeak out of Ren when she wrapped her into a tight hug, snuggling into her. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She rested her cheek against Ren’s collarbone. “What did you expect, anyway? You know how Sleeping Beauty goes. I love your kisses, Ren - do you usually do that when you wake up?”

“I’m sorry, I just thought you were asleep,” Ren stammered. She didn’t answer the question at all, but the idea of it all was too cute and made Rika hold her even closer. And Ren did just the same to her, gently at first, as if she were handling glass.

It would have been easy to fall back asleep. For sure her sleep would be dreamless. They had class in the morning, anyway, and with their finals looming, they needed all the rest they could get.

But Rika wondered about those past nights - the dark room, the empty bed. Maybe it was something about this particular night, or how no one could see the stars in Kamihama, or how there were more shadows cast in the room than the last time she opened her eyes...

“Say, you’re chilly. Did you go outside?”

Ren nodded, gently, against Rika’s head. “Yeah. I just...” She stammered, searched for words. “If I wake up and I can’t sleep. I go out to clear my head, sometimes. Just for a minute.”

“Oh yeah, I remember now, you told me before. Your parents always chewed you out when they caught you, right?”

“Yeah. I understand why they did it, but…”

See, Ren still had this problem, this idea that everyone had their weight to shoulder and she couldn’t further burden them with her own. Rika couldn’t say she was much different. She did want to say it was okay. She did want to simply let the morning burn away her fears, knew it was so wrong to talk about those dreams where Ren wasn’t there anymore, but Rika’s words had a way of coming out anyway–

“Ren.” Rika did try to stop herself there. She did. “I’ve been awake for a while. I think, maybe, since you left?”

Ren tensed.

Rika finally, reluctantly, pulled an arm away from Ren and immediately grabbed her hand instead. Pushed her thumb against the ring on Ren’s finger. Still so chilly. Ren was so used to dark and cold places, as if she were the moon.

“It’s really dangerous out there,” Rika said.

“...Yeah.”

Rika had to open her mouth a few times before she could speak again. “You know, a few years ago, I had this dream, where I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep - it, it really felt like it was real life, right? And then - I thought about seeing if you were awake, or at least sending you something you could read in the morning, and I was trying to find your number in my phone, and I couldn’t find it, and, in the dream, I suddenly remembered - you...” She still couldn’t bring herself to truly say it– “...weren’t there anymore.”

“Rika.” Her voice dropped like a stone. “Oh, Rika, I’m sorry…”

“What,” she joked, “so you were the one messing with my dreams and making me miss you? You–” She stopped herself, realizing she was just trying to bury all of her feelings again– “It wasn’t your fault. You never did anything wrong. But sometimes that dream kept coming back, and - and after we moved in together, it got worse. It really, really, really isn’t your fault at all, I just - realized that maybe sometimes, it wasn’t really a dream after all.”

It took awhile for Ren to speak, too.

“...I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I know I did. I’m sorry - my parents were worried sick, too, but I still went out. I just got better at hiding it, I didn’t want them to worry, and I thought, since I was a magical girl, it was less dangerous, but…” Her sigh was shaky. “In some ways...in a lot of ways, it’s more dangerous, isn’t it?”

Ren was the kind of person to say dangerous. Rika was the kind to say say worse. But. But if she hadn’t made that wish five years ago, she wouldn’t have this. She wouldn’t have love. She wouldn’t have Ren. And all of those beautiful and horrible things that came with love - hurt, jealousy (for some reason for one moment that brief memory erupted again - a long time ago, Ren introducing Rika to a friend, something like _ah, um, this is Kyoko Sakura, she helped me before I met you,_ that awful, acidic feeling Rika braved with a smile because she knew exactly how she felt, how for a while felt like it was all starting over again, _your best friend fell in love again and it wasn’t you–_ ), fear, so much fear, because all it took was one hungry and desperate rival hunting for territory, all it took was one witch prowling, and they were just in college where their lives were supposed to get started and yet sometimes on those lonely nights it felt so close to the end–

“I just don’t want to stop you from doing something you enjoy, just because I’m scared,” Rika finally blurted out, just to stop herself from tearing up. God, she felt like such a child, and frankly she had no clue how she made it this far.

The city had scars she had never noticed when she was so young.

“It’s selfish,” Rika said when Ren didn’t speak. “I’m worried. I just wanted to say it out loud.”

Her throat was tight but at least she wasn’t going to cry. They lay there in that quiet night, still clutching each other’s hand. After a few minutes, Ren was breathing so quietly, slowly, Rika wondered if that would be all.

But Ren always took her time to speak. And it was never a waste.

“Rika...maybe it doesn’t have to be so late at night? I mean - maybe, after dinner, when we don’t have class, we can go for a walk? That might be what I actually need. Between studying and writing, by the time I was finished it was so late at night, so I never tried going out earlier. But maybe...erm, well, we don’t have to–”

“Ren–”

“It’s freezing cold, and maybe it’s not a good idea. I - if you don’t like it, I can stop–”

Rika grabbed her face with both hands. “Ren, I’d love that.” Her smile turned to a goofy grin. “I mean, I’ll probably eat those words if it gets really cold tomorrow–” 

“I–”

“ _But,_ ” Rika interjected, “that just means you have to keep me warm.”

Somewhere in that darkness above, among those stars the city couldn’t see, there were many man-made machines, all of them long forgotten by their creators, all of them floating through a distant, final abyss. The distance between stars was immeasurable and impossible to cross.

She didn’t want to let go of Ren ever again.

“Yes,” Ren said softly, her face blooming into a smile between Rika’s hands. “I - I definitely will.”

That was the smile, the winning smile, the smile Rika couldn’t resist. She pushed her thumbs into Ren’s dimples and went right in and caught Ren’s mouth. Ren just took a split-second to react - back then, she always seemed so startled that Rika would actually want to hug her and kiss her. It was patient, soft, and she still felt it lingering even though it was just a few seconds long. She imagined she had pushed some of her warmth back into Ren. 

“Ren, I really love you.”

“I love - I love you too. I’ll see you in the morning.”

They settled back into sleep.

They had it all planned to walk together the next night. They had even more time than they thought - it was Ren’s turn to cook dinner, but Emiri surprised them with a visit and mooched food in exchange for cleaning up. Ultimately, however, it was just a little thing that got in the way: one of Ren’s laces came undone as soon as they walked to the ground floor. She sat on a bench to fix it up. Night after night, they would walk together, but there and then, for a long time, they simply sat together outside their apartment, pressed against each other, side-by-side, beneath the veil of clouds. Listening to the sound of their hearts and the wind turning through the night. Warmth in their hands. Love.


End file.
